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Joining other Religious Right leaders, Gary Bauer of the Campaign for Working Families is jumping to the defense of Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson, who was suspended by A&E after making homophobic and racist remarks. Bauer seems to think that Robertson was simply expressing Christian values in his interview where he attacked gay people and waxed nostalgia for Jim Crow. According to Bauer, Robertson is a victim of “the radical left's jihad against America's cultural norms and our Judeo-Christian values.”

Naturally, it is all President Obama’s fault: “The culture war has been going on for decades. But the election of Barack Obama has unleashed the left, making it more aggressive than ever,” said Bauer.

While Phil Robertson has been the focus of this furor, the real attention should be directed to the intolerant homosexual rights movement and its totalitarian left-wing allies in Big Media.

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The same cultural forces trying to make sure that no nativity scene is displayed in a public square;

The people who tried to destroy the president of Chick-fil-A for the "crime" of supporting traditional marriage;

The bureaucrats in the Obama Administration who are trying to force Catholic and evangelical business owners to subsidize abortion and pay for other medical services and products that violate their religious values;

The radicals who demand that a small, Christian-owned bakery be forced to cater a same-sex "wedding;"

The same people who are purging our history books and replacing the text with anti-American history -- it is all part of the radical left's jihad against America's cultural norms and our Judeo-Christian values.

The culture war has been going on for decades. But the election of Barack Obama has unleashed the left, making it more aggressive than ever.

Sadly, on our side, the resistance is often too weak. Too many churches are AWOL, too many politicians are cowering in fear, too many people are afraid to speak up.

I believe America, this great experiment in ordered liberty under God, will survive or fall based on how we handle these issues, not whether billionaires pay higher taxes or if the chained consumer price index is adjusted.

Adding to this week’s great news on marriage equality, today U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Shelby struck down Utah’s same-sex marriage ban, which was put into the state constitution by referendum in 2004.

One of the far right’s standard attacks on the increasing number of judicial opinions striking down discriminatory marriage laws is that judges are “redefining marriage” and “usurping the legislature.” No doubt they will do so again in this case. Fortunately, Judge Shelby opens his opinion with a brief but important explanation of how the American constitutional system works:

The issue the court must address in this case is therefore not who should define marriage, but the narrow question of whether Utah’s current definition of marriage is permissible under the Constitution.…

[T]he legal issues presented in this lawsuit do not depend on whether Utah’s laws were the result of its legislature or a referendum, or whether the laws passed by the widest or smallest of margins. The question presented here depends instead on the Constitution itself…

In his opinion, Judge Shelby also takes apart the harmful, bogus argument that preventing same-sex couples from marrying somehow “elevate[s] the status of opposite-sex marriage”:

Rather than protecting or supporting the families of opposite-sex couples, Amendment 3 perpetuates inequality by holding that the families and relationships of same-sex couples are not now, nor ever will be, worthy of recognition. Amendment 3 does not thereby elevate the status of opposite-sex marriage; it merely demeans the dignity of same-sex couples. And while the State cites an interest in protecting traditional marriage, it protects that interest by denying one of the most traditional aspects of marriage to thousands of its citizens: the right to form a family that is strengthened by a partnership based on love, intimacy, and shared responsibilities. The Plaintiffs’ desire to publicly declare their vows of commitment and support to each other is a testament to the strength of marriage in society, not a sign that, by opening its doors to all individuals, it is in danger of collapse. (Emphasis added.)

Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) appeared at a David Horowitz Freedom Center function last month where he agreed with a co-panelist who said Obama may be a secret Muslim, or is at least acting like one. Franks sat on the panel with anti-Muslim activists Robert Spencer, Erick Stakelbeck and Caroline Glick. A member of the audience asked Spencer — to laughter and applause — that if the Quran dictates that apostates must face execution, “If so, how does this apply to Obama? And if so, what should we do about it?”

Spencer replied that the president’s religion is “murky, probably intentionally so.” He went on to say that because you don’t hear Muslims “calling for Obama to be executed as an apostate” for leaving Islam for Christianity, then it is likely he is still a Muslim.

“With so many hotheads and firebrands and hardliners, you would think that somebody would say that, unless maybe they know something,” Spencer said.

He went on to argue that Obama’s Christian faith is further proof that he’s a Muslim, explaining that he can still be a Muslim while he identifies as a Christian. Spencer added: “Whatever his personal beliefs are, certainly if he were a secret Muslim, he wouldn’t be acting any differently from how he is anyway.”

Dr. John Morris of the Institute for Creation Research thinks that “no truly helpful discovery has come from evolution” since evolution proponents, unlike Creationists, “rely on silly evolutionary stories to make us believe it.”

He told co-host Chris O’Brien in a radio bulletin today that evolution fails because it “ought to be obvious” and “people are not gullible enough to think that a frog change into a prince.”

O’Brien: Has evolutionary science been useful to the world?

Morris: Chris, you’d be surprised. Evolutionists say that evolution undergirds all of biology, and yet no truly helpful discovery has come from evolution. It is true that many evolutionists have made amazing discoveries, but these are based on scientific observation of the way things are—how they originated is a different question. It seems to me that if evolution were really a theory of everything, as they claim, then it ought to be obvious; they shouldn’t have to rely on silly evolutionary stories to make us believe it. Face it, evolution is unbelievable because it is simply not true. Most people are not gullible enough to think that a frog change into a prince. Creation is a much better answer and we learn that when we go back to Genesis.

This week, South Carolina state senator Larry Grooms introduced a bill similar to the one recently passed in Texas that would require any doctor performing an abortion in the state to have “admitting privileges at a local hospital.”

According to one pastor who claims to have had a hand in the drafting of Grooms’ bill, that is the goal of the proposed provision in South Carolina. At an event in September at his church – which it appears that Sen. Grooms was attending -- pastor Bobby Eubanks explained that he planned to “help” the senator write a bill imposing a number of abortion restrictions so that he could “introduce it under his name.”

“My plan is to regulate the industry not to end it,” he said, explaining that regulations such as waiting periods and mandatory sonograms raise costs and therefore make abortions less affordable for the “girls” who are seeking them. “How you get the costs to go up is you regulate it,” he said, telling the story of a woman he met who said she was barely able to scrape up $500 for an abortion.

He also touted the admitting privileges provision, claiming that abortion clinics won’t help women who experience complications: “The girl, if she’s down there and she starts bleeding when she comes out, she’s on her own.”

But he also made clear the real reason he was pushing the provision, saying, “not a hospital in South Carolina” would actually grant the required privileges.

Eubanks then announced that he would track down any legislator who opposed his bill and “stand in front of their church and say, ‘You have a member of your church who promotes killing babies.’”

We left a message with Sen. Grooms’ office asking if Eubanks did in fact have a hand in writing the bill, and will update this post if we hear back from them.

It appears that the two are at least occasional collaborators. On the day that Grooms filed his bill, he joined Eubanks and his fellow state senator LeeBright – currently the top-polling primary challenger to Sen. Lindsey Graham – at a protest in front of a Charleston hospital that provides reproductive medicine training to its residents.

Eubanks has some other notable views about abortion and other issues. At an event in July also attended by U.S. Sen. Tim Scott and Sen. Bright, Eubanks declared that he would “be in jail” if Hillary Clinton became president, suggested that Clinton had Ambassador Chris Stevens killed in Benghazi “because he knew stuff he was trying to move up the ladder,” claimed that “abortion continues to be because people don’t want biracial children,” warned that marriage equality would lead to “Braveheart”-style government destruction of marriage, and explained that slavery was “not about racism” but instead was “an accepted way of economics throughout the world.” In fact, when it comes to slavery, he said, “the real fault lies with Africa for selling their people to slave traders.”

It seems that every Religious Right group has put out a petition this week defending Phil Robertson, the Duck Dynasty star who was suspended after he made racist and homophobic statements in an interview with GQ. We are not surprised that the Right has pounced on the opportunity to play the victim and grow their email lists.

This National Organization for Marriage’s petition claims Robertson was suspended merely for stating “his belief in the truth of the Bible,” insisting that “nothing that Phil Robertson said is hateful” and that A&E “succumbed to the demands of bullies like the HRC and GLAAD, which is disgraceful for an entity whose very existence depends on the free exchange of ideas.”

The American Family Association has its own petition thanking Robertson for “declaring the truth of God’s word” and charging that the network undermined the reality star’s “rights to religious freedom and freedom of speech”…because apparently the First Amendment says that no one can ever be disciplined in their job over things they say.

Ralph Reed’s Faith & Freedom Coalition is urging men to grow beards in “support for Phil and Christian Values,” while asking women to “lovingly tolerate the facial scruff” of men who grow their Phil-beards.

Even the ex-gay organization Voice of the Voiceless has its own petition, warning that America will soon “turn into a fascist society” if gay rights groups aren’t stopped.

Americans For Truth About Homosexuality head Peter LaBarbera complains that Robertson is a victim of “homo-fascism” while “Christians and moral-minded Americans must rally behind Phil Robertson.”

Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel salutes Robertson as “a breath of fresh air in this Miley Cyrus culture” who is bravely restoring America’s Christian heritage.

In a fundraising email to supporters, Ian Bayne, who is running in the Republican primary to challenge Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) in the 11th District, compared Robertson to Rosa Parks. The fundraising email began: "Today, Ian Bayne called Phil Robertson, star of the A&E series "Duck Dynasty," the 'Rosa Parks' of our generation."

RWW’s Paranoia-Rama takes a look at five of the week’s most absurd conspiracy theories from the Right.

Apparently, we here at Right Wing Watch are receiving secret information on the American public courtesy of the NSA. This week we learned top-secret details about the War on Christmas, along with the Obama administration’s false flag attacks and plan to nuke South Carolina. It’s all here in this week’s Paranoia-Rama:

5. Student Suspended For Saying ‘Merry Christmas’?

The National Report strikes again! An article from the satirical site about a San Francisco school suspending a nine-year-old student for wishing a “Merry Christmas” to an atheist teacher went viral this week, enraging War on Christmas belligerents. A real school with a similar name to the fictional school mnamed in the National Report’s spoof has been inundated with nasty calls and violent threats from angry people across the country who didn’t realize the article was a hoax.

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association believes that last week’s controversial arrest of an Indian diplomat in New York occurred not because of the diplomat’s alleged mistreatment of her housekeeper but as “payback” for an Indian supreme court decision recriminalizing homosexuality. “I think there is one simple reason: This is payback by President Obama because a week ago the supreme court in the country of India reinstated a law that bans homosexual sex, it criminalizes homosexual conduct,” Fischer said.

Legal disputes between the diplomat and her former maid have been going on for months and Secretary of State John Kerry expressed regret over the incident, but since Fischer is absolutely obsessed with gay issues it’s not like he needs any evidence to substantiate his case.

3. Obama Will Use NSA To Leak Information To Liberal Groups

Larry Klayman, the conservative attorney who successfully challenged the NSA’s domestic surveillance programs, seems convinced that President Obama will leak information collected by the NSA to progressive organizations, including us (even though our parent organization, People For the American Way, is part of a separate legal challenge to the NSA).

Klayman believes this is part of a plan “to destroy conservatives, libertarians, people of faith and anyone else who believes in true freedom” that will concentrate power in the hands of Obama’s “wildly ultra-leftist, atheist, anti-Judeo-Christian, anti-white and Muslim benefactors, supporters and friends.”

2. About That Guy Who Stopped Obama From Nuking Charleston…

As we’ve been reporting, conservative activist Jim Garrow is insistent that three military officials dealing with nuclear arms were fired because they stopped President Obama’s plan to nuke Charleston, South Carolina. Yesterday, the Washington Post ran a report on the actual reasons the one of the generals responsible for nuclear weapons was fired, including his excessive drinking and misbehavior.

Not that any of Garrow’s followers know or care, as we expect Garrow — who recently predicted the emergence of an anti-Obama “guerrilla war” — to continue to claim that the general was a great hero who saved America from a malicious Obama-Soros scheme.

1. Obama’s ‘False Flag’ Actress?

Leave it to Erik Rush to promote a bizarre blog post from a fringe right-wing website about how young women photographed crying at the scenes of the Aurora and Sandy Hook shootings and the Boston Marathon Bombing look similar, and therefore must be the same woman and an actress paid by President Obama.

The website, Moral Matters, says that the photos are proof that Obama is staging the violent events in order to distract from his “criminal scandals and his criminal ID fraud,” bolster gun control efforts and gut the Second Amendment. We wonder if Erik Rush will discuss this conspiracy theory the next time Fox News invites him on air.

By all accounts, 2013 was a banner year for the gay rights movement: The Supreme Court struck down the worst part of the Defense of Marriage Act, seven new states legalized marriage equality, polls showed Americans backing gay rights in ever-growing numbers, anti-gay crusader Ken Cuccinelli was defeated in his bid to become Virginia’s governor, the Boy Scouts loosened their discriminatory policies, and the “ex-gay” movement began to self-destruct.

But although it’s become an annual tradition to declare the end of the Religious Right, we have seen that equality opponents are only ratcheting up their rhetoric in the face of new challenges and fights next year.

Here we take a look back at some of the worst anti-gay rhetoric and activism of 2013.

10. Class Action Lawsuit Against Homosexuality?

Tea Party Unity founder Rick Scarborough wants to put homosexuality on trial … literally. Scarborough, a right-wing Texas pastor with close ties to Republicans including Ted Cruz and Rick Perry, said during a Tea Party Unity conference call with anti-gay activist Peter LaBarbera that he hopes there will be a “ class action lawsuit ” brought against homosexuality much like the one brought against tobacco companies.

Conservatives also created a martyr out of an Air Force sergeant who claimed he was disciplined and reassigned for opposing marriage equality. An investigation deemed his story baseless: it turned out the sergeant himself actually requested to be reassigned.

6. Dangerous Transphobic Smear Campaign

As part of its campaign to repeal a California law protecting transgender students, the Pacific Justice Institute fabricated a case of sexual harassment by a transgender girl in a Colorado school. The student who was targeted by the PJI hoax was placed on suicide watch as a result of the baseless smear campaign, but that didn’tstopright-wingactivists from citing the case as reason to oppose protections for transgender kids. Gordon Klingenschmitt even accused the transgender student of “visual rape” and demonic possession:

Alan Keyes worried that gay scouts would bully their peers until they succumbed to their “sexual advances” and warned of increased rates of drug abuse and gang violence, while John Stemberger — who this year launched an anti-gay alternative to the BSA — feared the change would not only “create a wave of boy-on-boy sexual abuse.” Stemberger was also upset that young people think “it’s hip, it’s edgy to be gay and so they’re all saying they’re gay.”

Republican politicians also criticized the policy shift: Gov. Rick Perry likened gay rights foes to opponents of slavery; Rep. Louie Gohmert suggested the policy change would lead to child abuse; Rep. Steve Palazzo warned it would bring about the end of America and former Sen. Rick Santorum said it would “murder” scouting.

In the perennial tradition of blaming everything bad that happens on gay people, we learned in 2013 that gay rights caused everything from tornadoes to forest fires and floods… including Noah’s Flood. After Minnesota legalized same-sex marriage, one radio talk show host even confidently predicted that the state would face economic and weather-related punishment.

Self-proclaimed prophet Cindy Jacobs, who linked the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell to freak bird deaths, feared that the Supreme Court marriage rulings would lead to divine wrath in the form of natural disasters:

2. Religious Right’s Global Reach

Facing a losing battle at home, anti-gay groups are increasingly looking abroad to defend existing anti-gay laws and push for even more extreme measures. Just days after Russia’s parliament passed its infamous ban on “gay propaganda,” the National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown traveled to Moscow to testify in favor of a new ban on the adoption of Russian orphans by same-sex couples and even single people who live in countries that allow for marriage equality. Brown did so at the invitation of the World Congress of Families, a group that allies with nearly every major Religious Right group in the United States, which is planning to hold its annual conference in Moscow next year.

American anti-gay activists were also active in pushing anti-gay policies throughout Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and Uganda, which just passed its draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Massachusetts-based pastor Scott Lively helped craft Uganda’s extreme legislation. He also had a hand in Russia’s “gay propaganda” law, which he called “one of the proudest achievements of my career.”

1. Religious Right Explodes Over SCOTUS

Perhaps nothing ignited right-wing fury this year as much as the Supreme Court’s decisions on Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act. As soon as the high court struck down a key part of DOMA and declined to revive Prop 8, activists started warning that it is only a matter of time beforeGoddestroysAmerica (and the world) or the country collapsesonitsown. One ex-gay leader reacted to the decisions by claiming that Justices Kennedy and Kagan and President Obama are all secretly gay.

Don’t worry, we didn’t forget about the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer, who stands of a class of his own for his near-daily ranting against LGBT people. This year, the Focal Point host added to his anti-gay repertoire by charging that gay people not only led Nazi Germany but also are bringing Nazism to America with a Jim Crow-style campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against Christians.

I can understand why Senate Republicans are angry about the recent change in the Senate’s filibuster rules. It means that their agenda of obstruction just got a lot harder. But all their righteous indignation is ringing hollow.

Yesterday, Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, issued a statement attacking the committee’s chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, for saying he would consider changing committee policies to make it harder for Republican senators to hold up nominations.

The reason Leahy has to even consider policy changes in committee is that GOP senators, in an attempt at retribution for the “nuclear option,” have repeatedly brought up an obscure rule that allows them to prevent the Judiciary Committee from meeting. They have also prevented the committee from meeting by simply not showing up, ensuring the lack of a quorum. Along with threats that Republican senators would refuse to return their “blue slips” signaling approval for hearings on home-state nominees, Sen. Leahy was faced with the prospect of not being able to process any nominees. Senate Republicans have literally not been allowing “the world’s greatest deliberative body” to deliberate on judicial nominations.

And the reason why Senate Democrats were driven to change the filibuster rules for presidential nominees in the first place was that the Republican minority was blocking nominees to positions they just didn’t want the president to be allowed to fill. In other words, they were using the Senate’s rules of obstruction in an attempt to nullify laws they did not like and reverse the results of the presidential election.

This didn’t promote “deliberation.” It shut the entire process down.

This sanctimonious whining from Grassley and his fellow obstructionist Republicans isn’t fooling anyone. Personally, I would have preferred not to have gotten to this place. My guess is that Senator Leahy would as well. But when you’re trying to govern a country and the minority party won’t let you complete even the most basic tasks of governance, there really is no choice. Comity has to be a two-way street.

The high and mighty act doesn’t work when you’re behaving like a child.

Speaking with Alex Jones on Wednesday, Larry Klayman said that he, like Gandhi, will lead a revolution in America that will overthrow the “evil” Obama administration.

“Obama’s a socialist, a borderline communist, he’s sympathetic to Muslim interests, he does everything he can to destroy Israel and frankly we have somebody in the White House who is evil, plain and simple,” Klayman told Jones, before arguing that since the Republicans are not an effective opposition, he himself will lead an anti-Obama revolution.

Erik Rush thinks that gays and lesbians should be wary of supporting progressive causes because he predicts that one day left-wing governments will outlaw homosexuality and begin to persecute gay people.

Rush said on his radio show today that big-government leads to communism or Sharia law, systems that “do not tolerate homosexuality” since “they know countries or societies without a moral center don’t survive.”

“What’s going to happen is the political left is going to turn around once they are done using these people and they are going to start persecuting them,” he charged, before talking about how intelligent and prophetic he is.

It has been quite a year for marriage equality. Today the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the state is required by its constitution to allow same-sex couples to marry. This means that New Mexico joins the impressive list of states that legalized marriage for same-sex couples in 2013 alone, including Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, and becomes the 17th state in the country to legalize marriage equality.

As the march toward full equality nationwide continues with today’s victory in New Mexico, the momentum is undeniable. PFAW will continue to advocate for marriage equality until every couple can access the protections necessary to take care of each other for a lifetime.

After vowing to close his Family Talk organization if Obamacare’s contraception mandate is upheld in court, James Dobson yesterday likened conditions in the US to Nazi Germany.

Dobson told conservative talk show host Janet Mefferd that he knows a pastor who “expects to end his life in prison because that’s the direction that we’re going as a country,” warning that pastors will find themselves in a similar predicament as those who lived under the Nazi regime.

“Go back to 1939 when the German Lutheran church turned a blind eye to what Hitler was doing, not all of them: [Deitrich] Bonhoeffer and others and paid for it with their lives but they were not going to compromise and there’s a point at which we have to say we’re there, we’re there,” Dobson said. “It’s not quite as bad as it was then but we see where the train is moving, we see where it’s going.”

Reflecting on his recent trip to Jamaica to defend the country’s ban on homosexuality, Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality said that homosexuality must remain a crime because otherwise gay people may — gasp! — organize politically and demand equality under the law.

LaBarbera writes in an essay on his website that homosexuality acts like “an insatiable, devouring monster,” lamenting that “we in America have our own arrogant and vengeful ‘gay’ (LGBT) ‘monster in our midst.’”

Folks, when I was in Jamaica I took time in my presentations to share this compelling passage from British historian Paul Johnson, from his book, The Quest for God: A Personal Pilgrimage. (Hat tip to Paul Cameron of Family Research Institute for bringing this to light.) I have found nothing that better explains the inevitable slippery slope of indulged pro-homosexual activism — from the repeal of anti-sodomy laws (motivated by well-intended but misguided compassion toward homosexuals as “victims”); to demands for “tolerance” of homosexuality; to the steady growth of a “gay rights” movement winning passage of laws granting affirmative “rights” based on sexual perversion (and gender confusion); to homosexual and transgender advocacy in schools (targeting even the very young [see book photo]); and ultimately, to the rise of a powerful, well-heeled Homosexual/Transgender Lobby that achieves dominance in society at the expense of biblical truth, religious tradition, public health and the rights of others to disagree.

Note that Johnson correctly calls homosexuality a “great moral evil” – something I think even many committed Christians – neutered by political correctness and decades of “gay” propaganda – today would have a hard time admitting (to their shame). Johnson, writing in 1996, had not yet experienced the attachment of this moral evil to the noble institution of marriage itself (as is now legal in the U.K and in 16 American states). Sin’s advance – like an insatiable, devouring monster — destroys people and cultures, and displaces virtue with man-centered notions of wrong as right (Isaiah 5:20).

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Of course, we in America have our own arrogant and vengeful “gay” (LGBT) “monster in our midst” — and I warned the Jamaicans that they, too, will have one if they give in to Western powers by opening up the Pandora’s box of homosexual “rights” in their country. The smart and resolute Jamaican leaders and pastors whom I encountered understand the tragic lesson from Britain and the United States: all attempts to appease this self-justifying Sin Movement are doomed to fail, as each concession leads only to further, and more radical, demands.

UPDATE: LaBarbera also used the “monster” line in his statement on Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson:

Homosexual behavior is wrong, unnatural, often high-risk, but thankfully, changeable -- as testified to by the redeemed lives of formerly "gay" men like Michael Glatze and ex-lesbian women like Yvette Cantu Schneider who have overcome homosexuality through faith in Jesus Christ. The Homosexual Lobby in America has morphed into an intolerant and 'vengeful' 'monster in our midst' -- to quote British historian Paul Johnson in describing the growth of homosexual power in the U.K. Christians and moral-minded Americans must rally behind Phil Robertson, condemn the homo-fascist 'Gay Thought Police' led by GLAAD who regularly pressure the media into silencing moral speech, and demand that an energetic and civil debate on homosexuality be allowed to flourish in this land we call free.

Larry Klayman is still reeling from his embarrassing appearance on CNN with host Don Lemon this week, and in a WorldNetDaily interview today says that he may file a defamation lawsuit against the network, charging that the interview was a set up by President Obama, the Clintons and the Democratic National Committee.

Count Bob Vander Plaats among the Religious Right activists responding to a court decision decriminalizing polygamy in Utah by crowing that they “correctly” predicted that marriage equality victories would lead to legalized polygamous marriage.